The effectiveness of the family re-integration strategy on the quality of married life (case study: wives of male prisoners in Ardakan city)

Imprisonment is a difficult and stressful experience for both the prisoner and his family, especially their wives; the long separation of prisoners from society and family leads to many negative consequences in their spouses. This study aimed to investigating the effectiveness of an intervention based on family re-integration on resilience, intimacy and marital satisfaction of wives of prisoners who are nearby to be released.

This was a semi-experimental study that conducted a pre-test post-test design with a control group. 30 spouses of prisoners among the families supported by Ardakan Prisoners' Support Association were randomly selected as a sample and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The experimental group received 12 sessions of intervention based on family re-integration, while the control group did not receive any intervention. The participants of both groups answered the resilience questionnaires (Connor & Davidson, 2003), intimacy scale (Bagaroozi, 2001) and marital satisfaction questionnaire (Olson, 1998) before and after intervention sessions. Data were analyzed using multiway analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) via SPSS software.Findings and

The results showed that in the experimental group, as compared to control group, the intervention based on family re-integrations led to a significant increase in the resilience, intimacy and marital satisfaction of the prisoners' wives (p<.01). This finding shows that before the release of male prisoners, the use of family re-integrations interventions can lead to improvement of resilience, intimacy and marital satisfaction of their wives.